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"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Immediately place your mouse here, tap your index finger, and be whisked away to my all-time favorite series of preview diaries: EGD’s Four Plays. He draws up two base offensive plays for Michigan and two base offensive plays of the opponent, shows how each team defends those plays, and then breaks down the individual matchups. A sample:

By year four most guys in the study had their programs in better shape than the previous three seasons. Also very few of them were still around:

Only half the coachs on our list of 36 are still at their schools. It gets worse as you go farther back in time. Of the 8 coaches hired for the 2007 season, Nick Saban and Mark Dantonio are the only ones still around. A whopping 5 were fired and another (Harbaugh) left for the NFL.

Even among the 14 “winners” covered above, the story is not much better. 5 guys capitalized on their success and moved on to other positions, and 2 were fired (one scandal, on failed to sustain their initial success), only 7 remain (Snyder, Saban, Briles, Hoke, Kelly, Fisher, Cutcliffe).

I did a somewhat similar study of Big Ten and SEC coaching hires since 1999 in this year’s HTTV, breaking them into categories of “Strong” (like stealing another BCS team’s HC for unholy money), “Average” (like upgrading a proven mid-major coach or BCS/NFL coordinator) or “Cheap” (what Purdue does). Of the SEC’s 30 head coaching hires, 18 were in the “Strong” category, while economy class was reserved for only Vandy, Kentucky, and Arkansas needing a one-year stopgap; only three (Rodriguez, John L. Smith, and Urban) of the Big Ten’s 22 hires rated that, and 13 were on the cheap.

A brave man once requested me To answer questions that are key 'Is it to be or not to be?' And I replied 'Oh why ask me?"

It's Korea out there in user-generated content land, and it's my job to triage. The only way to make it through sane is Hawkeye-level satire, and making fun of people who take themselves seriously, and not looking too hard at the antics of certain people from Toledo. Okay Radar, state your business, in one word or less:

Before getting into last week's game, Best and Worst this week spent about 1,000 words on exorcising demons, spinning a tale of Michigan's decline with the rise of offense based on athletes in space. Once the 2014 ASU game was in hand, it occurred to me that this is where Michigan ought to have been 7 years ago. By 2007 the college football world had witnessed the spread's effectiveness in all its forms, and had time to adjust their schemes, recruit for it, and develop those recruits. The prep sites already identified dual-threat and pro-style quarterbacks separately, and the nationally #1 2008 recruit was absolutely the former.

One part of The Horror story is that Opening Day of 2007 was Michigan's first after switching to zone blocking. [Correction: I have been going around remembering this wrong for years. M went zone in 2006.] Our metrics for evaluating that weren't as good back then, but from memory the blocking that day was about on par with last Saturday's—a work in progress with some obvious successes—except the unit was 20% more senior Jake Long. The biggest difference in the two game plans is once 2007 App State began cheating to stop zone left, DeBord never punished them for it by taking the easy WR screen-type yards. On Saturday, Nussmeier absolutely did, and while that certainly wasn't 2007 Appalachian State out there, it wasn't so hard to imagine if it had been.

Which brings me to the above gif, a sort of preview of things to come in 2015. It was indeed a rollout from a two-TE formation that required a quarterback to make a play that required amazing awareness, footwork and arm strength, but not running speed. It seems the armistice between spread zealots and the MANBALLers will be this: the 2007 offense except with sensible constraints, the 2007 defense except with five times as many functional LBs and DBs, and the 2007 outcomes except we won't lose to teams with a major talent disadvantage. So long as it's successful there will be peace, and so long as the players do amazing things they will be gif'd. Both sides of the fanbase have decided we'd rather eat some lemons that go through bad ideas and bad fits any more.

I Attended the Beth MOOOwins school of jOUrnalism this sUmmer. According to Beth, the key to doing play-by-play is to randomly Over-anunciate your vOwels. That's the key to doing a Beth MOwins imitAYtion. Just blAst the occAsional vOwel at mAx vOlume. Especially the O's, she loves her O's.

I tend to imagine ESPN has some kid sitting behind Mowins in the booth and the kid is kicking her chair and rocking it back and forth as she talks. In answer to what does Joey Galloway bring to the game: something that's far more annoying than Beth Mowins.

Preach!. Sharik showed that Alabama, whose special teams players might be All-Conference starters already at other schools, was 112th in net punting because they dinosaur. Purdue, who recruits so terribly that Urban Meyer complained it was hurting the conference, was 2nd. [UPDATE: apparently we read that wrong. HT to johnthesavage.]

21 versus 1. Three weeks before the season is when I start getting amped. Three weeks is that it-doesn't-feel-that-far spot when you realize you have that thing this weekend, and you get next weekend, and after that the weeks have numbers.

I had this question posed last night: Who's the most exciting player you've ever watched?. Obvious first candidate was Denard. Then the people old enough to remember Carter were like "It's Anthony Carter hands down!" Nobody bothered to listen to my feelingsball about when you'd scan a Grbac ball's trajectory, hoping, and then you'd see it was in fact Desmond, and that moment you realized you are once again about to be treated to things that happen when Desmond Howard interacts with a football. No, I am told: that was AC. With 21 you feel it coming; when it's 1 you can almost touch it.

Announcements

Playing time. HELLO to a 10-pound baby-in-South-Bend (not actually in South Bend). Bry_Mac's (2nd) kid joins mine, Fuller's, and Schnepp's to round out MGoBlog's huge 2014 class. That should close out the year in MGoOffspring.

Tickets are going cheap. You may have noticed a slight reorganization of the menu bar this week:

We're partnering with TiqIQ this year. They're an aggregator so they'll pull listings from a bunch of secondary markets plus direct from the box office. The current schedule will link to tix. The nice part about them is they have a free, Facebook-based fan exchange (SellerDirect) we can incorporate into the spreadsheet. Hopefully that should clear up some of the security problems the open google doc had. Right now the App State tix are going for $27; the Miami (NTM) are $23 and Maryland is $30. #thisseasonman.

Diaries

2013 in Gifs. Drkboard is now Red_Lee. Last year he was giving us a spectacular gif per game until everyone switched those off, and those are collected in one diary. Along with, well… Well since the point has already been made and bandied about how the fanbase feels about the AD we've been making a conscious effort to save the griping for gripes. Also the free, open scrimmage a few weeks ago was very appreciated by the hardcore fans who attended, despite the abandoned attempt to get people to register for it. We're trying to be good, but you know what: it's the day before an opening game that only an insane person would schedule, and the gif guy makes it so easy to be bad! Compromise: it's after [the jump].

At the link LSA Superstarbroke down every rep from the above, though the times seem off. I don't know why De'Veon Smith wasn't in them at all. There's one where Ross is going against Samuelson with Ty Isaac the RB, and…

REP 15 @ 1:43

O: D. Samuelson (OL) D: J. Ross III (LB) T: T. Isaac (RB)

Ross pops into Samuelson, who is slow to react. Ross is in control but HOLY SHIT Isaac squares and totally buries Ross with a shoulder shiver. Isaac is running with extreme power here - Ross didn't have a chance.

That happens at 1:16 actually. Takeaways from a single drill that the offense is supposed to win: Samuelson is still a ways away from figuring (that's totally expected), Ross is what he is (smart, great at anticipating, still smallish), and whoa Ty Isaac; I'm not 100% sure the outcome would have been different if you replaced Ross with Pipkins there.

Guessing we'll be doing a lot of RB rating this season as Michigan tries to settle on which of the four backs is more effective. [Fuller]

FYI yes it's Isaac; Smith wears #4 and for some reason that could be "don't injure the starter" he doesn't appear in the drill. By the way his nickname is "Honey Badger" now.

Speaking of rating rushers. Hero of the diaries MCalibur graced us with 2,800 words to create a metric for rating rushers—RBs/QBs/FBs/etc.—by mixing the touchdown rate and fumble rate with adjusted yards per attempt. I was particularly impressed by how he elegantly challenged the longstanding arbitrary assumption that 20 yards was a "big" play by showing the standard deviation on runs is 7.5 and the average run is about 4 yards, so a "big" play can be defined as one that goes beyond the standard deviation, i.e. 12 yards or more should be the standard for a breakaway run.

The result is something like a passer rating for RBs, and a chart with the contributing factors broken out. Unfortunately scheme and opponent and skill around the player etc. have a major influence: Toussaint's 68% went-forward rate is probably 15% his fault. Ameer Abdullah's fumble rate and low TD rate appeared to damage him, but how much of that is on Nebraska being so bend-don't-break and then trying to Abdullah their way across the 50 yard line before letting Tommy pass?

So it's not ready to enter the pantheon of stats yet, but it's still a remarkable example of what people will accomplish when you give them free stats to work with.

Speaking of tons of fascinating and useful data, for free… MCalibur mentioned cfbstats as his resource but I'm guessing he downloaded his data awhile ago, since going there now just sends you to data hoarding company Marty now works for.

The good news is last time I mentioned that in this space a reader offered to help us scrub NCAA data and reproduce that, and Mathlete jumped on the project, and there's now a very long email chain that I'm CC'ed on but has gotten way beyond my comprehension that should sometime in the coming months result in a comprehensive stats page on this site, with all of our base data available to download for free. Finally there will be a place you can go on the internet to get free, sane football stats (other than FO) that treat sacks as passing plays and tempo as something that exists. It also converts "ATH"s to positions, and will classify an Arizona "SB" as a running back and a Northwestern "SB" as a tight end. That place will be here. #ilovemyreaders!

There are five…SIX principle benchmarks of a quarterback. The secret is surprise, surprise and fear, fear and a fanatical devotion to protection… [Fuller]

Diarist of the Week MCalibur was bumped this morning. Scroll, or continue. Some Meta things to get into first.

East Coast Trip. The New York and Philly alumni associations have invited Brian to come do his spiel. Details:

Monday, 8/18: New York, New York (We're in New York!) Brian will be at Professor Thom's on 2nd Ave between 13th & 14th, 7pm to 8:30, for their annual kickoff event, along with Paul Myerberg of USA Today. There's a thread up to put your questions in, and for any other signup details.

Tuesday, 8/19:Philadelphia, PA. 6:30 to 9pm at the Fox and Hound on 15th and Spruce with the Philly alumni association. Thread for questions. They have tickets on sale and details here. Hot appetizers provided.

Yes Brian will have a stack of HTTVs there. About that…

Check your mailbox right now. The bulk of the Kickstarter books should arrive today. These were supposed to go direct from the printer two weeks ago; instead they arrived a week ago in Ann Arbor, whence we got them to a mailing house and out as quickly as possible.

Ticket Center. We're shopping for a new ticket vendor where MGoBloggers will be able to exchange with each other for free and find better deals on tix, since this year's secondary market will be pretty alive this year. If you have preferences (not Stubhub—they haven't offered) let them be known in the comments; number one priority is what you'll want to use.

The Venn of Brandon. This by 4roses is a Venn of Brandon's responsibilities:

Do you need the entire key? I'm kind of confused on the methodology; I think the idea is the circle is whether it's a priority for the AD? Are we placing different ideas here, so like Slippery Rock is B3? How do we separate complaints about marketing in general from being bad at it?